Just make sure you're ignoring the fluff equally. Afterall, if the girls want to play a female space marine there should be no reason not to allow the males to play as male Adetus Fraterus.

The background denies one by saying the geneseed only works with male hormones and tissue types (ie, the Y chromosome) and denies the other by the law that the ecclesiarchy may not have 'men under arms'.

A genetic incompatabiltiy is a far greater obstacle than an imperial law, so I would say it would be far easier to have male sisters of battle than female marines.

But so long as things are being equalised. Anything less and it's not equality.

I have at any one time up to two women in my group and one of them specifically relishes the opportunity to play a Callidus assassin alongside a killteam. An imperial assassin may not be as strong and tough as a marine but they have better training and skills (yes, there are people that can beat space marines).

Hellebore

Female marines stir up a lot of controversy whenever brought up. My personal opinion is if a player can bull a really good reason as to why a female Marine might be plausible, go for it. I am a die hard 40k fan with my favorite army being Space Marines, but as a GM I think there's no point in throwing away the possibility for some very interesting scenarios as well as quite a few good roleplaying possibilities because 40k fans nerd rage over the idea. Keep an open mind.

Assuming, for the moment, that female Marines were to exist, my number one rule for accepting them is that they must never be sexualized, EVER. Female Marines must be the remorseless genetically enhanced killing machines their male counterparts are, if not more to make up for their (theoretical) vastly inferior numbers. I'd consider it a handful of female Marines for every thousand Space Marines and on a scale like that in a society made up almost entirely of genetically-superior-for-waging-war males, the women would really have to pick up the pace, moreso than any normal Space Marine, to prove that devoting the resources required to make more of them is a good idea. Where a male Marine need only jump, a female would need to fly. And that, I believe, more than anything else, is what would make them exceptionally dangerous.

As for those who can't get over the idea: http://i645.photobucket.com/albums/uu179/Temesian/40k/1238027671693.jpg

Hellebore said:

Actually can someone point out to me where the background says this? I haven't been reading any of the more recent TT releases, so is it there? I recall that some years ago a lot of fans thought that the above interpretation of the fluff was cannon, wherein it was in fact merely the result of a popular piece of fan-fluff on the net.

Artemesia said:

Ponytails? Nah... would be shaved or close cropped just like the rest of the marines (if female SM's existed). It definetly wouldn't be cute!

I like the XP'd up Sisters of Battle idea. They made the Sister's very feminine to include the female gender crowd IMO. Being Deathwatch, and working usually under high ranking Xeno-Inquisitors and the likes, tagging along another member of the Ecclesiarch certainly is plausible.

macd21 said:

Surely. The following article was originally written in WD in the late 80s early 90s (it was a 100s issue). It was later reprinted in the Index Astartes series again in WD, which was later collected into 4 books where it was republished. It was also put up on the GW website where it remained until they upgraded their website in mid 2008.

This is the article from the wayback machine archives. It follows the same format and contains the same pictures as the IA series:

web.archive.org/web/20080411194030/uk.games-workshop.com/spacemarines/initiation/3/

The statement about them being male, male hormones and tissue types is on page 3 (the above linked page) at the beginning of the last paragraph on the page.

Hellebore

macd21 said:

Codex:Witch Hunters explains the Ecclesiarchy angle. At the start of M36 Goge Vandire held the highests post of both the Ecclesiarchy AND the Administratum. The Ecclesiarchy also had its own armed forces at this time. Not suprisingly, this much power in the hands of one paranoid man was not a good idea.What followed was a good old fashioned Imperium wide civil war. A charismatic priest named Sebastian Thor lead the forces opposing vandire and won after much bloodletting.

After Goge Vandire was eliminated, Sebastian Thor started major reforms. One of the big ones addressed the balance of power. The Decree Passive was an act that specifically forbade the Ecclesiarchy from having "men under arms".

I'm pretty sure the sororitas entry in the IH mentions that.

Hellebore

Ehm...in REAL life there are some women BORN with the chromosomes Yx. Really.

You hate me now, I Know.

Sebashaw said:

No. Why should we? Like any good Sci-fi explanations the way Geneseed is described to work is mostly just techno-babble . Real world rarely has anything to do with how thing work in some place far far away in space/time.

Sebashaw said:

Sebashaw said:

No there are genetic males born with androgen insensitiviy that produce phenotypically female characteristics, but they aren't female. The presence of a Y chromosome makes you male, whether you look like a male or not.

Unless you are talking about gender vs sex, which are very different things. Hence why they call them gender reassignment operations because you cannot change ones sex.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Actually, it's true. It was mentioned in New Scientist a few months ago. In some rare circumstances, women have been found that have YX chromosomes. Of course, when it comes to the Imperium, what is rare on Earth would result in millions of women with XY chromosomes across the galaxy.

I tend to lean towards the group that maintains that there are NO female SM's. But, I would be surprised if Deathwatch doesn't come with an Inquisitor Xenos character that could be either.

Also, I wouldn't argue with the idea that the Adeptus Astartes are androgynous enough for a good female roleplayer to easily pull off a Deathwatch character.

Adunaphel said:

See, now I don't think we'll get an Inquisitor from the Ordos Xenos...if only because isn't Dark Heresy supposed to be getting an Inquisitor supplement?

MILLANDSON said:

Can you point me to the source?

What do you mean by 'woman'? Gender and sex are seperate things. A person can think of themselves as a woman and genetically be male. Are you referring to a fully reproductively capable individual that can carry a foetus to term in a functional uterus with the XY chromosome? Because afaik that is an impossibility. Androgen insensitivity can produce female phenotype but the individual is sterile. XXY is also possible but they are still not female.

There are people wandering around with all sorts of genetic differences, but being phenotypically female doesn't make one female. It might make you culturally female (hence GENDER) but you are not the sex female according to biology.

Hellebore

I'm pretty sure I had read that somewhere back in the 3800s the Imperium had adopted a "don't ask don't tell" policy for all its military forces. Once the armor goes on, only an apothecary ever gets to take a peek underneath, and they're not allowed due to patient confidentiality rules. By the time a soldier is good enough to be a Marine, it shouldn't really matter if Brother Johnson who just joined your tactical squad is actually Sister Johnson.

As another aside, back when I played 40K, my favorite character I used in my IG army was a female commissar, who would take a nasty wound most every battle but always do something quite heroic.

Adunaphel said:

there are no female marines due to the fact that the implants given to them are geared towards male hormones, all the primarchs were male, and the implants grown from one of their dna combined with dna collected from the 18th implant given. though i wont argue that its possible that maybe chaos marines such as the emperor's children may have messed around with the idea or even attempted it (or in this case be given "gifts" by their androgynous god)

Torbal said:

Erm no. As stated(multiple times):

Female Space Marines *cannot* exist, barring some freakish ridiculousness courtesy of Slaanesh. The Geneseed will not allow for it.

But otherwise, yes. The Imperial Guard tends to accept anyone who volunteers.

There is objectively no reason that female space marines COULDN'T have been created to begin with. There is no cosmic law preventing extra organs from being designed to work with female tissue types.

The only reasons that female space marines 'don't' exist are:

1) The geneseed was made to work with male hormones and tissue types. That was how they were created by the Emperor's team of scientists. They were deliberately created to exclude females. So you can't take the geneseed from space marines and put it in a female and expect it to work.

2) The Imperium does not believe in advancement the way it did during the Emperor's days. So having modern imperial researchers deliberately making geneseed that works with female tissues is against the current mindset.

3) The Imperium may not have the capacity/knowledge available to actually recreate the Emperor's work from 10,000 years ago. So whether they had the wherewithall to actually develop the ability to make female marines or not, they may not be ABLE to do it.

That leaves people like Fabulous Bill (Fabius Bile) who might have the ability if they so chose, or Hereteks/Logicians. But it doesn't really include the mainstream imperial organisations.

Hellebore

I'll have to look through my old copies of the New Scientist to find the article that referenced it, but there are a few articles I found online with a quick google-search. One is this:

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/S/SexChromosomes.html

Where it states that if the SRY gene on the Y chromosome was damaged, a normal woman would be born with XY chromosomes, and that this has happened, though it is rare.

Either way, would it matter if the woman was sterile? She's still got XY chromosomes, and therefore the genetic incompatablility of the Marine geneseed (which only works for males [xy chromosomes]) wouldn't come into play.

Which means yes, female marines are possible, because some women can be born with XY chromosomes.

People who are androgen insensitive do not react to male hormones. They either have malfunctioning cell receptors, don't produce male hormone or are missing them altogether. Which means they would not be able to work with marine organs.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swyer_syndrome

XY disgonadal dysgenesis seems to be what you are referring to. Here too they do not develop testes and therefore do not produce male hormones. They do not go through maturation at puberty as they have neither ovaries nor testes to induce such changes.

In none of these cases would an adult individual be female, except in the gender sense. The dysgenesis case wouldn't even appear adult unless they received hormone therapy.

Considering where the majority of marine recruits come from, I highly doubt any of them receive any kind of hormone therapy. In both cases they would singled out as 'different' from the primitive societies they come from and they would both appear as females phenotypically and be treated as such socially (or perhaps not if their physical characteristics set them apart enough).

Considering also the rareity of these conditions, even IF they produce male hormones (which they don't or aren't receptive to), trying to find a person who is phenotypically female but genotypically male AND is genetically compatable with the geneseed is going to be ridiculously difficult. Making marines is hard enough as it is without making 20,000 times harder (the rarity of the above swyer syndrome).

But all you've done is allowed female roleplayers to play a space marine who has genetic abnormalities to get past the XY requirement. You've not given them a free pass to be a genetic female and a space marine. You've basically said 'so long as you have a genetic change in your character that makes them genetically male, you get to be a space marine.' Not sure how that 'fixes' the problem. It would help those people who happen to HAVE such genetic changes play a marine (or not depending on how they feel about it).

So what, now we have male sisters of battle because they went for gender reassignment? Or male XX gonadal dysgenesis sisters of battle?

Where would the imperium draw the line between gender and sex? Would a man who 'believed' himself to be female, dressed as society demanded females to dress, acted as society demanded females to act, was treated as female, be allowed into the Sororitas just because he believed himself female?

That line of thinking opens up a whole can of worms, especially in the close minded Imperium.

Hellebore

I'm sorry to have to repeat earlier sentiments but woman cannot be space marines and I doubt that many people miss them.

Woman with arms the size of my thighs, and heads like bricks do not appeal to me, they are not cool and are most certainly not anyones (jeese I hope anyway) Idea of beautiful.

If you want to play real Deathwatch then your going to need to play a man, a Man's man, an Awesome man, a genetically enhanced, super-human, power armoured, tank, MAN.

:)

I'm deeply confused as to why people are bringing real world science into this and linking articles and such.

By default, there are unlikely to be female Space Marines, just as there aren't male Sisters of Battle.

If any group has a serious issue with that fact, they can simply ignore it.

This is not a big deal.

Evilgm said:

Join the club. I have seen this exact same comedy play out many, many times over the years. It is a twisted ritual that must be played out every single time the words "female" and "Space Marine" appear together on a forum.

Indeed, Aajav-Khan.

I guess I should have been explicitly clear:

Your game is what you make of it - if you want to have female space marines, there is nothing stopping you from hand-waving them in. I think canon is highly overrated.

I do think the lads discussion drawing on real world science is kind of fascinating though.

Kas said:

Why does it have to be a sexual/gender/attraction thing?

As far as my understanding goes, Space Marines are essentially genderless. The process of becoming a marine leaves the subject sterile, they have no interest in women, they don't take brides or have a sex drive, etc. I would assume the same would go for female Marines(though replace women with men.... well...depending on the individual...). Their sole purpose is to wage war against the enemies of the Imperium, and I see no reason why female Space Marines should be any different.